The Turbulent Star Formation Model. Outline and Tests

Abstract

We summarize the current status of the turbulent model of star formation in turbulent molecular clouds. In this model, clouds, clumps and cores form a hierarchy of nested density fluctuations caused by the turbulence, and either collapse or re-expand. Cores that collapse can be either internally sub- or super-sonic. The former cannot further fragment, and can possibly be associated with the formation of a single or a few stars. The latter, instead, can undergo turbulent fragmentation during their collapse, and probably give rise to a cluster of bound objects. The star formation efficiency is low because only a small fraction of the density fluctuations proceed to collapse. Those that do not may constitute a class of ``failed'' cores that can be associated with the observed starless cores. ``Synthetic'' observations of cores in numerical simulations of non-magnetic turbulence show that a large fraction of them have subsonic internal velocity dispersions, can be fitted by Bonnor-Ebert column density profiles, and exhibit ``coherence'' (an apparent independence of linewidth with column density near the projected core centers), in agreement with observed properties of molecular cloud cores.